Subjects

Friday, April 26, 2013

While the
concept of the “big lie” is most often attributed to an incarcerated Adolph
Hitler during his recitation of Mein Kampf, the origins of the phrase most
certainly reach further back into time, and they provide an additional element:
Repetition. In fact, as far back as
1888, a schoolboy axiom was to provide not only a “big” lie, but the cheek to
repeat it endlessly in order to secure its evolution from possibility to plausible
certainty

In a recent
response to a constituent, Freshman Senator Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant (49th
District) began her reasons for cutting pension benefits for current retirees (and
possibly active workers in the public sector given House amendments) with the
usual Springfield opening: “Thank you for contacting me regarding our state’s pension crisis.”

Excuse me,
Senator? Don’t you mean “debt crisis?”

It would appear
that the Senator has been duly indoctrinated by those who would create the ad
hominem logical fallacy that the workers with pensions are to blame for the
current shortfalls in the Illinois budget, which makes it difficult to pay for
services to other areas of the state. And, I might add, Senator Bertino-Tarrant
is quite familiar with the public educational system – as a principal as well
as Will County Superintendent of Education.
What happened, Senator? Was it
subversion or immersion – or both? It
would appear on the surface that she has been transformed after a very short
experience in the General Assembly.

Pension Crisis unfairly evokes culpability for a
historically shared retirement program which is no longer acceptable to cost
cutting, bottom line business corporations. Indeed, the phrase arouses envy in many recent
recession-damaged employees and non-union workers, toiling in an economy
without concern or care for their lives beyond exploitation. The words “Pension Crisis” deliberately divert the problem to a fallacious
target: the current workers and retirees who still have some promises of
traditional pensions.

The Chicago
Tribune has been the very model of a one-note-Johnny in its use of the damaging
expression “Pension Crisis.” Even when the General Assembly stops
momentarily to consider court ordered conceal-and-carry, or marriage equality,
or even medical marijuana; the Chicago Tribune can be counted upon to apply the
broad brush, which makes pensions themselves the issue – NOT the Debt Crisis owed for not having made
payments for many decades.

This kind of
phrasal finger pointing plays well in a business and economic climate where,
according to a recent Frontline program, nearly 35% of Baby Boomers have no
retirement savings whatsoever. Those who
do (nearly 60 million) have watched their 401k programs eviscerated by Wall
Street managed market disasters – if they were lucky enough to have one (The
Retirement Gamble). The emergence of 401k
programs in the mid 1980’s put all the risks in the hands of the workers, not
the employers, and the waiting financial industry made money despite the good
times or bad times.

Senator
Daniel Biss employs the “pension crisis”
refrain constantly at town hall meetings and in newsletters to constituents: “The
pension crisis is perhaps the most
prominent fiscal challenge facing our state today; it puts an incredible amount
of pressure on our budget, while simultaneously putting at risk the retirement
security of teachers and other public employees”(http://danielbiss.com/node/123 ).

He goes on, “If
we avoid taking the difficult steps necessary to fix our pension system, the
growing cost would consume so much of the state budget that we would be unable
to fund any other sector of government, including human services, health care,
infrastructure, public safety, education -- and eventually -- the salaries of
the public employees in the pension systems.”
Those currently trekking along in the public sector path, I’m afraid,
will end up taking those difficult additional steps. Senator

SB2404 is not nearly enough for these three.

Biss would promote an instrument that
asks – like 401k’s did in the 80’s – for the worker to assume economic risks
for end-of-life retirement, while the state would avoid such risks in these new
actuarial promises. Cash Balance Plans,
one of the Senator’s favorite saws, will provide increases in portfolios but to
a calibrated level, beyond which the state reaps your extra earnings. Losses, well, those losses are yours to
suffer. It’s your risk now. These new non-pension footfalls are indeed
difficult - as well as very different.

Back to Senator
Bertino-Tarrant: to be fair, she has co-sponsored SB2404, a proposal supported by
many public sector unions as a small, first step toward finding a
constitutional resolution to the “Debt Crisis.” Senator Bertino-Tarrant continues,
“This change would create an immediate savings of $4.7 billion and will save
the state $18 billion or more over the next thirty years.”

The Tribune,
Civic Committee, Illinois Policy Institute, Rep. Nekritz, Senator Biss, and
others would say this is not nearly enough.
They would shout, “Pension Crisis.”
They would speciously connect the Debt
Crisis to the annual costs of pension for the state retirement
systems. They would call out the need to
share the sacrifice as a justification to fiscally injure those who were
originally cheated, even as the annual costs for pensions has fallen or
remained static these last two years.

In fact,
payments for pensions for public sector workers this year will be less than
last year. This is not to diminish nor
disparage those needs – education, human, and medical services. And other methods to meet those fiscal
shortfalls exist – even if purposely overlooked.

But let’s not
be swept along with the verbiage that so characterizes those who would eliminate
pensions altogether, had they the chance.
Let’s stop addressing the need to take money from those owed even more
with a truth: “We in Illinois face a debt
crisis of nearly $100 billion, and in order to claw our way out of the
fiscal hole, we in the General Assembly want to take even more away from those
we shortchanged to begin with.”

That’s the
truth.

If a Senator or
a Representative or even a one-term Governor wants to explain “Pension Crisis,” just add that
sentence, and I for one will applaud you for your honesty at least.

For Senator Biss,
that sentence would be amended with this: “and then you will be able to have a
pension or what’s left of it, despite the constitutional promises I want to
ignore.”

The Daily Herald has already stated unambiguously that we think
pension reform needs to be instituted immediately and we tend to favor — in
principle at least, if not in every detail — a compromise approach offered by
state Rep. Elaine Nekritz and Sen. Daniel Biss.
For the Daily Herald
to describe HB3411 as a compromise is the very definition of fallacious and distorted
reporting. Mr. Slusher would have people
believe it is compromise when one side determines to eliminate another side’s
benefits without a voice or a seat at the table - benefits promised constitutionally. Later on in the essay, you will read pathetic passage defending their bias; the
author will characterize the issues as very complicated. Not really for the Daily Herald. They don’t do complicated.

Might we, then, have an ulterior motive to promote a specific agenda
in sponsoring along with Reboot Illinois an information program on pension
reform proposals? It’s an understandable question. But the answer is an
unequivocal no. Our only objective for the Pension Forum scheduled for next
Wednesday night is to add depth and detail to the discussion over what to do
about the state’s pension crisis. That’s an interesting obfuscation,
especially given the spokesperson for Reboot Illinois is a past member of the
editorial staff if the Daily Herald. And
yet, spokespersons for the Reboot organization are trained, curried and
graduated into the Reboot organization. In fact, Mr. Lampinen (the moderator) considered Doubek not only a friend, but also a mentor...a colleague...a strategic advisor to corporate leadership...feedback I have always valued"(Doubek leaves Daily Herald for Reboot Illinois ‘mission’ - Time Out Chicago).

With that goal in mind, we and Reboot — a nonpartisan political reform
website that coincidentally has also supported the Biss-Nekritz agenda — seek
to create a program in which some of the leading ideas on the pension issue can
get a thorough review before a suburban audience. If you believe that Reboot is a non-partisan political
reform website, you are making a very strained and conscious effort to ignore
Reboot’s founders’ contributions to the Koch brothers and other organizations
that undermine workers unions across the United States. Nearly $2 million in contributions to the
Koch brothers in the past few years would make one wonder what Reboot’s
“non-partisan” agenda is really all about.
Of course, once the Koch’s have purchased the Chicago Tribune, we might
not expect any surprising revelations.
The continued attacks on public sectors workers will continue,
exponentially.

Reboot’s Chief Operating Officer
Madeleine Doubek secured commitments from state Reps. Nekritz, a Northbrook
Democrat, and Tom Morrison, a Palatine Republican, and Illinois Education
Association President Cinda Klickna to conduct a panel discussion that Doubek
and Daily Herald Political Editor Kerry Lester will moderate. By the way, Doubek is a past editor at the
DH. Let’s see – DH editor picked by Reboot
founder who gives millions to Koch bros. to lead new non-Partisan political
website? Laughable.

It’s important to point out that the three speakers espouse positions
that differ substantially from each other. Among other things, Nekritz’
proposal would end the compounding of annual 3 percent cost-of-living increases
for retirees, make other adjustments to benefits and gradually shift
responsibility for making pension payments from the state to local agencies. Besides running head-on into constitutional conflict, Nekritz’s bill
endorses a bill that makes those burglarized with the payment for Illinois’
debt burden. Some of the component parts
appear whimsical; even in the face of the pain it will cause thousands of
pension recipients. Case in point:In a recent email correspondence from Representative
Cassidy’s handlers, there is absolutely no reason for the amount of $25,000 to
be the base for determining the new concept of a simple COLA. In short, it is absolutely arbitrary. Maybe it just sounded good at the moment?

Morrison’s — co-sponsored by Wheaton Republican Jeanne Ives — would
move all new hires into a 401(k)-style savings program and freeze
cost-of-living increases, at least for now. These are two Tea Party right-wingers that would eliminate all
payments to workers that pave roads, teach children, provide health care, care
for the indigent, stop fires, provide emergency services, etc. By simply dropping the pensions, we can eliminate
all past debt, right? Nope – we still
owe the pensions $100 billion. But the Tea
Party loves simple without reflection, or legality, or consequence.

The IEA supports proposals that maintain a traditional pension
program, raise revenues by closing what they call corporate tax loopholes and
require increased contributions from employees.
That would be SB2404,
which is only the start of an attempt to find some balance between payment due
for the theft of billions of dollars of guaranteed benefits from public workers
and the need to provide services to current Illinois citizens.

Each plan has strengths and weaknesses, and to be clear, these are not
the only ideas worth discussing. But they are worth discussing, and in the
process, the other ideas will surely emerge, as may others that no one has ever
thought of before. Such is the purpose of our forum — that important ideas will
be explained carefully and reviewed critically, that many perspectives will be
aired openly and that all who participate will leave with information and ideas
they did not have when they began. How obsequious, you’ve been
invited to a gathering to share in the very opposite of what we promote – “we
tend to favor…Nekritz approach…” Maybe additional ideas from ALEC, one of the
Reboot’s chief friends, will be offered?

We knew from the outset that public pensions are an important topic,
but we did not expect the complicated politics of the issue to attract as much
interest as they have. As a result, we’ve had to move to a larger venue and
still cap attendance and turn away some people. That process naturally stirs
fears some people may be shut out so that their point of view will not be
presented. To that concern, I can only say: We are an information company. We
have and express opinions sometimes, but our No. 1 objective, our No. 1 interest,
is to provide information, particularly information that will help our
democracy work better. Warning: The Daily Herald’s vision of “our”
will not necessarily be the same as yours, public sector worker.

So, if for whatever reason you cannot make next week’s forum, take
heart. We’ll be live streaming the program and finding other ways to involve
people in the discussion who may not be attending in person. Who knows? Our own
views about the legislative approaches under discussion may change. We know for
certain that they’ll grow. Whether you are a teacher worried about your future,
a citizen worried about your taxes or a school board member worried about your
budget, whether you attend in person, watch at dailyherald.com or just read about it all
later, we hope yours will, too. You betcha. Those good people at the Daily Herald and the
pipeline they work with called Reboot Illinois could possibly change their
minds and agree that public sector workers were ripped off, owed money, agreed
to make all their payments while the state did not, maintain a part of a middle class that
provides a huge econocmic boost to the economy in Illinois... and there are many
other means to correct a systemic state failure to secure revenue. BUT I DOUBT IT.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Two bills
siting before Illinois legislators dramatically illustrate the polarized
direction that “pension reform” could take.

The first bill,
HB3411, developed by Representative Elaine Nekritz and then-Representative
Daniel Biss could likely be called for a vote in the House in the next two
days. Representative Tom Cross, who
often promised he would never hurt current retirees, signed on eagerly as a
co-sponsor.

HB3411 is the
bill heralded by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago as the preeminent
method of dealing with the enormous debt owed to public sector workers after
many decades of diverting the promised matching funds for other political
purposes. The Civic Federation, a
business club, also endorses the bill.
The Chicago Tribune's editorial board, as evidenced in copy, loves HB3411.

Retirees won't be affected.

It is,
therefore, no surprise that HB3411 is designed to address the state’s enormous,
resultant debt by further ignoring promises made to current retirees, punishing
active workers with increases in contributions and loss of benefits earned, and
jeopardizing the economic futures of would-be workers by creating new tiers and ultimately far less benefits.

When you ask
those many Representatives who signed on with Nekritz and Biss about the
possible harm in the bill, you will not hear the words collaboration or pension
protection clause or promise or benefit – except to say
that they believe you have none of these given the dire situation in
Illinois.

They would also
tell you that you are responsible
for getting too much, living too long, making too much, not paying in enough,
etc.

SB2404 is
another very different kind of bill sitting in a Senate Committee, and the bill
represents a very opposite approach to finding some resolution to the enormous
debt the state faces after so many years of delinquency in payments to public
workers. SB2404 was sponsored by Senator
Linda Holmes and Senator Pamela Althoff.
The bill is also co-sponsored by another twenty-two Senators.

The Civic
Committee and the Civic Federation do not appreciate SB2404. The Chicago Tribune considers it weak and
insufficient in generating the kind of funding that would quickly replace the
billions diverted by earlier politicians.
The Tribune and the business groups want that money back quickly, and
they want it to come from the people who were owed the money to begin with.

It is,
therefore, no surprise that SB2404 is designed to take a beginning, significant
step toward fixing the debt the state owes the public workers. SB2404 would provide a funding guarantee and
work toward a dedicated revenue stream to pay pensions (as in IMRF). It would require a two - three percent
increase in contributions by public workers.
It is a start, and the sponsors
see it that way.

When you ask those
many Senators who signed on with Senators Holmes and Althoff about the bill,
you will hear the words you’d never hear from Rep. Nekrtiz and others talking
about HB3411. In fact, one Senator said,
“While it is just one solution out of many, it (SB2404) is without a doubt
constitutional.” Another Senator
remarked, “The measure of any man or politician is not the promises he keeps
during good times, but during difficult times.
We need to keep our promises.”
Others like Senator Althoff attribute the bill’s strength to its
“compromise and collaboration.”

Also, make a
phone call and remind Senate Committee members that SB2404 deserves life and
needs to be released from committee to the floor: Harmon, Silverstein,
Clayborne, J. Cullerton, Hunter, Lightford, Link, Munoz, Steans, Trotter,
Murphy, Luechtenfeld, Radogno, Righter, Syverson.

Oh, by the way
-

The Illinois
Policy Institute does not endorse either bill, but backs another bizarre idea to do
away with pensions altogether, but that’s another story first told by Ayn
Rand.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Groups like the Illinois Policy Institute, the Civic
Federation, the Civic Committee for the Commercial Club of Chicago, and other
corporatist assemblages have been loud and vocal supporters in the incessant
battle to strip Illinois’ public unions of work-place guaranteed benefits like
pensions.

Some use striking images like an Abe Lincoln with empty
pockets to emphasize their fearful messages.
Others provide mannequin-like beauties to answer questions with toothy
smiles on evening programs like Chicago Tonight. Others use strong-arm tactics like listing
the names of legislators to excoriate in double-page ads of supportive papers like
the Chicago Tribune. And some quietly tiptoe
in the back door.

November last year witnessed the launch of a brand new
for-profit media concern called Reboot Illinois. Reboot Illinois is the brainchild of Anne
Griffin, a woman hedge fund manager in a world comprised of men. Crain’s described Griffin’s pride in her “new
baby,” but also her wish to remain just a “quiet investor.”

Crain’s also interviewed the first editor and political
writer selected by Griffin to spearhead the project, Madeline Doubek, a former
Daily Herald editor. “ We intend to be the home and hub for people
to speak up and speak out and take back ownership of our government in Illinois,”
she explained to Crain’s (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20121119/BLOGS03/121119797/anne-griffin-launches-reboot-illinois-today). Griffin specified through another spokesperson
that Ms. Griffin had no intentions of operating the day-to-day operations, but
will instead remain “a silent investor.”
What Griffin envisioned is an “online media site dedicated to citizen
journalism.” Sounds non-partisan
enough, but….

A quick look at
the media website under “About Us” begins to sound a tad shrill in its concerns
and not so clear about its ideology – except for taking back government for the
citizens. “We are paying more and getting
less. Illinois raised taxes by 67% in 2011, making it one of the most taxed
states in America. Yet, we have nothing to show for it. Pension costs are
crowding out essential services for the state, especially for the neediest. And
hardworking taxpayers simply can’t afford to pay more” (http://rebootillinois.com/about ).

I think I hear
the teakettle steaming?

Welcome to our getaway cottage

And who actually
is Anne Griffin?

Well, Ms. Griffin,
who prefers to work in the background or shadows of her new campaign is
something of a financial marketing wizard, the head of “Aragon Global
management LLC, a multi-million dollar hedge fund that invests in
communications, financial and consumer stocks…” (Crain’s). According to Open Secrets, she and her
husband Kenneth, give nearly as much money to the National Republican Committee
and local Republicans as the Koch brothers.
In 2004, they spent nearly a quarter of million dollars in donations to
the Grand Old Party (http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/topindivs.php).

On April 24th,
Reboot Illinois is holding a “serious” discussion on pensions with the for-profit Daily
Herald at the Wojcik Center at Harper's College from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. According to the organizers, response has been
overwhelming, and the event had to be moved to Harpers College in Palatine, IL. There will be a rally outside the Wojcik Center from 5 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. by Northern Illinois Jobs with Justice. The Daily Herald editor
John Lampinen is “thrilled” to be working as partners with Reboot in developing
this forum. I expect Lampinen will be
the host and leader of questions. Certainly,
it will not be Anne Griffin, who just works in the background.

But one does wonder
what kind of questions might come from a group which spends so much time
complaining about tax issues and so, so, so much money on the Koch brothers.

Rep. Elaine Nekritz who promotes the Civic Committee's desire to cut away at most benefits without regard for constitutional protection in her bills) will be there. Tea Party Representative Tom Morrison (who believes there just shouldn't be such a thing as pensions at all) will be there. I want to wish IEA President
Cinda Klickna my best wishes as she wanders into this orchestrated forum. As Reboot
says, “But our questions aren't
the important ones. Yours are. Our role is to provide the setting and then get
out of the way. We look to you to lead the discussion”

About Me

I am a retiree, political activist, social advocate and community volunteer. I taught at Lyons Township High School in LaGrange for 34 years in the Language Arts classroom and worked as an administrator for several years. My current avocations include various community outreach and assistance programs. Having benefitted from employment in a collegial, reflective teaching environment that encouraged dedication and professionalism, I continue to seek the promotion of education at all levels as a long-term effort combining talent, perseverance, commitment, and constant professional growth - not a blind adherence to a business model of measured production.

Copyrights & Fair Use

This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of issues vital to a democracy. I believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law.